The Pale Horse - Agatha Christie [12]
He asked: “Do you think you would recognise this man if you saw him again?”
“Oh, yes.” Mr. Osborne was supremely confident. “I never forget a face. It’s one of my hobbies. I’ve always said that if one of these wife murderers came into my place and bought a nice little package of arsenic, I’d be able to swear to him at the trial. I’ve always had my hopes that something like that would happen one day.”
“But it hasn’t happened yet?”
Mr. Osborne admitted sadly that it hadn’t.
“And not likely to now,” he added wistfully. “I’m selling this business. Getting a very nice price for it, and retiring to Bournemouth.”
“It looks a nice place you’ve got here.”
“It’s got class,” said Mr. Osborne, a note of pride in his voice. “Nearly a hundred years we’ve been established here. My grandfather and my father before me. A good old-fashioned family business. Not that I saw it that way as a boy. Stuffy, I thought it. Like many a lad, I was bitten by the stage. Felt sure I could act. My father didn’t try to stop me. ‘See what you can make of it, my boy,’ he said. ‘You’ll find you’re no Sir Henry Irving.’ And how right he was! Very wise man, my father. Eighteen months or so in repertory and back I came into the business. Took a pride in it, I did. We’ve always kept good solid stuff. Old-fashioned. But quality. But nowadays”—he shook his head sadly—“disappointing for a pharmaceutist. All this toilet stuff. You’ve got to keep it. Half the profits come from all that muck. Powder and lipstick and face creams; and hair shampoos and fancy sponge bags. I don’t touch the stuff myself. I have a young lady behind the counter who attends to all that. No, it’s not what it used to be, having a chemist’s establishment. However, I’ve a good sum put by, and I’m getting a very good price, and I’ve made a down payment on a very nice little bungalow near Bournemouth.”
He added:
“Retire whilst you can still enjoy life. That’s my motto. I’ve got plenty of hobbies. Butterflies, for instance. And a bit of bird watching now and then. And gardening—plenty of good books on how to start a garden. And there’s travel. I might go on one of these cruises—see foreign parts before it’s too late.”
Lejeune rose.
“Well, I wish you the best of luck,” he said. “And if, before you actually leave these parts, you should catch sight of that man—”
“I’ll let you know at once, Mr. Lejeune. Naturally. You can count on me. It will be a pleasure. As I’ve told you, I’ve a very good eye for a face. I shall be on the lookout. On the qui vive, as they say. Oh yes. You can rely on me. It will be a pleasure.”
Four
Mark Easterbrook’s Narrative
I
I came out of the Old Vic, my friend Hermia Redcliffe beside me. We had been to see a performance of Macbeth. It was raining hard. As we ran across the street to the spot where I had parked the car, Hermia remarked unjustly that whenever one went to the Old Vic it always rained.
“It’s just one of those things.”
I dissented from this view. I said that, unlike sundials, she remembered only the rainy hours.
“Now at Glyndebourne,” went on Hermia as I let in the clutch, “I’ve always been lucky. I can’t imagine it other than perfection: the music—the glorious flower borders—the white flower border in particular.”
We discussed Glyndebourne and its music for a while, and then Hermia remarked:
“We’re not going to Dover for breakfast, are we?”
“Dover? What an extraordinary idea. I thought we’d go to the Fantasie. One needs some really good food and drink after all the magnificent blood and gloom of Macbeth, Shakespeare always makes me ravenous.”
“Yes. So does Wagner. Smoked salmon sandwiches at Covent Garden in the intervals are never enough to stay the pangs. As to why Dover, it’s because you’re driving in that direction.”
“One has to go round,” I explained.
“But you’ve overdone going round. You’re well away on the Old (or is it the New?) Kent Road.”
I took stock of my surroundings and had to admit that Hermia, as usual, was quite right.
“I always get muddled here,” I said in apology.
“It is confusing,